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Today sees the first beginnings of spring here – when the sun is just about strong enough to actually entice people out into the world, and into the back garden.

Enticing our four-year-old Weapon, is another matter, especially when he has been fully seduced into the ways of the iPad, and Hot Wheels toy car videos in particular.

After a spot of minature Golf Olympics (running and spider-jumping over carefully-laid minature golf clubs), thwacking a poor football with a long bamboo stick and a fair bit of planting, he decided he would prefer to go back inside for a spot of Hot Wheels video watching.

I was a little ready to drag him back outside, then I remember he is the product of two parents who tended to prefer the tech leisure solution to life, as opposed to playing outside.

So I’ll give him a little iPad time. Then take it away from him, and drag him to the local park. Maybe he’ll remember the joy of the slide…

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So the other day, I was standing on an Underground platform in the suburbs (ie not underground, thankfully) when I observed a couple with a small kid, about the same age as Our Kid.

Unfortunately, it became very apparent that Their Kid needed to use the toilet rapidly – but of course, there are no toilets on Underground platforms. So the parents basically took Their Kid’s trousers off, where he proceeded to quickly urinate on the platform (by a wall), before they put his trousers back on.

The question is, if it was your kid who needed to urinate, and you had two options:

a) Let him pee on the ground, and thus at least “encourage” his toilet training
b) Force him to pee in his trousers, and possibly set back his toilet training

What would you do?

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It seems that in 1938, Harvard started a study looking at 200+ men, and followed their lives from then on to see who flourished, who didn’t, and the reasons behind why they might or might not have done so.

Now, it would seem unlikely that we can help our toddler to find love at this early stage – unless it’s a love for dinosaurs and cars in which case he’s set – but it probably behooves us all as parents to make sure the other things are taken care of!

Most of the Internet is full of understandable adulation over the depictions of space travel to another planet.

Unfortunately, for me, the main emotional takeaway for me watching the trailer is musing on how awful it must be to have to abandon your family, and quite possibly never see them again. Which is possibly not quite what Nolan or the trailer marketeers had in mind…

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As a film fan, I’ve been internally wondering when the best time would be to take our three-year-old toddler to the cinema. Take him too early, and it may traumatise him for life. Take him too late, and he may not pick up the cinema film habit. And with an average film ticket costing £10 or more, you don’t really want to waste your time if it’s not going to work out.

But our local Cineworld offers Movies For Juniors, where adults and children can see a film for £1. This weekend, they were showing the Disney Oscar-winning film Frozen that HyperHam had wanted to see. So with some minor trepdiation and a “Be prepared for anything!” attitude, we booked our tickets online.

It all seemed to go so well to begin with. Monkey marched up the stairs like he owned the place – although, to be fair, he tends to do that with any set of stairs he sees – and then ran across the communal hallway like a boy who likes running. He sat down in the seats while we told him the big television was going to start soon. One minor hiccup involving fidgety feet and a huge mega-gulp drinks bucket notwithstanding, it was going smoothly so far.

Then the adverts started, which he diligently sat through. And the trailers, which he also diligently sat through, while occasionally asking for his favourite TV programme. Today’s digital on-demand generation – spoilt, I tells ya…

Then the short before the main feature started. And that’s when his itchy feet couldn’t take any more, and demanded to run up and down the stairs across the cinema. And try as we might, we couldn’t persuade him to sit quietly. So we ended up leaving the auditorium for the cool spring sunshine outside, where he happily spent another thirty minutes running up and down stairs.

It subsequently turns out that Cineworld offer a policy whereby if you have to leave the movie before it even starts, have a word with the manager on duty, and he/she may well refund your ticket price or give you vouchers to use for another day. Which seems remarkably nice of them – so a top money-saving tip there!

Like many a parent, I sometimes look for little language games so that my son can at least get a little grounding in another language aside from the lingua franca spoken in the household. Unlike other parents, I’m looking for games that can help teach my son Cantonese – which are surprisingly hard to find, since most language apps stick to European languages or choose Mandarin as a representation of the Chinese language.

So I was glad to be introduced to Pacca’s Carousel – a handy app (on Apple and Android) for toddlers that introduces some basic words in new languages including Cantonese and Arabic (as well as the usual standard French and Spanish).

It does this by allowing the user/child to pick from a bright range of colours, random objects and numbers to populate a carousel with. As the child touches the icon for each colour or object, the word for it in your chosen language is spoken aloud by a child, which helps to fix the pronounciation of the word to the object or colour.

Naturally, there are also some hidden surprises for certain objects, and there’s a range of bright and breezy soundtracks to accompany the choices your child makes. There’s even a night-time mode in case it becomes part of a kid’s bedtime routine.

It’s quite a handy little app, and I’m sure this will help any child acquire some basic words in a new language. Alex has been playing around with it and seems to quite enjoy it for what it is.

The woman formerly known as HyperHam has her own blog, and has just written a guide to what should be in your A&E / ER emergency kit for when you suddenly have to take your child to the hospital. It’s sad to think about it, but in the immortal words of Adele Rousseau from Aliens vs Predator, better to have one and never need it, rather than need it and not have it. http://www.sheawong.com/aeer-emergency-bag/

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I’m sure there are plenty of serious and scientifc studies and reasons as to why you shouldn’t give your child use of an iPad. But here’s another slightly more selfish reason.

On a day (like yesterday was) where it’s rainy and wet outside, which means you can’t play outside, an iPad has access to all sorts of new games and apps.

However, for our son, he uses it for one primary thing. Not for him the traditional carefully-planned structure of a TV station broadcast schedule. Nope, he wants his content when he wants it, and he also wants full control of it. If there’s a favourite bit, he’ll want to watch it again and again. (Sometimes, he’ll go up to the main TV and try to travel backwards in time by using a non-existent scrollbar on the TV set)

And so it came to pass, today, that he watched the same episode of Swashbuckle at least five times today. Primarily to join in the hearty song and cheers that start the show off – and indeed join in the dance movement and playground snarls. And then rewind to play it again. And again. And again.